Knocking on Our Door

Call it the ripple effect. Call it good news. No matter what you call it, the word about the successes among Global Sojourns Giving Circle-sponsored clubs is spreading.

What’s the magic sauce? Keep reading. New supporters will gain insight. Veteran supporters will find reassurance.

How we do it

GSGC provides grants to small, community-based groups run by determined, spirited and compassionate women and men who mentor local youth. Our focus – their focus — is empowering girls, which can ultimately lead to the alleviation of poverty and greater life opportunities. For a dozen years, we have focused on girls’ clubs.

But gender equality is a pipe dream without the understanding and support of boys and men, and so more recently, our grant recipients also include boys’ clubs. Members are learning the importance and value of empowered girls, and they are talking to village leaders about equal education for girls who are too often stuck at home for traditional and economic reasons.

As we work alongside these local leaders, we listen. Their voices, their concerns, their knowledge, guide our every step. Programs are customized to the needs or interests of each community and club leader — called Mentors — but all programs share a commitment to these eight core principles:

• Community buy-in: Eliminates top-down interference; ensures sustainability

• Safe space: Provides physical and emotional security needed to share concerns, ask questions, or disclose abuse

• Frequent and consistent meetings: Provides structure, hopefulness

• Small groups: Girls and boys form friendships; social networks strengthen

• Know your girls: Mentors know young people’s living situation, grades, challenges and dreams, and can better meet and support them

• Fun, creative, interactive: Provides new opportunities families cannot afford, new ways of thinking, new life skills, new knowledge base; builds community; keeps them coming back

• Accountability: Provides clarity; promotes understanding, honesty and responsibility

• Character- and values-based programming: Guides teens to become kind, compassionate and productive members of their families, communities and nations

The results School drop-out rates are falling. More high school graduates are enrolling in post-secondary studies. Teenage pregnancies are being avoided. Traditional attitudes about girls are evolving. Violence against girls is declining. GSGC clubs are being replicated.

Elizabeth is on the left and Given, wearing a vest, is on the right.